My footprints didn't just end here... :) xxx

Hello, everyone...it's me! I'm back! <3

And after being away from my blog for so, so long, its so hard, really, to know where to begin.

But I think it's time to stop going to such great lengths to make things perfectly right. To make my first stand, against that little voice in my head saying that I am not good enough...

It's time to just let go, and just let myself be me.

it's felt like...an age since a certain day, back in August 2015. It's been over two months. Two months, since I last blogged.

Two months since that day when I, as was often my custom, during those long, blissful, golden days which were the summer of 2015 - sat down one evening in the sunlit conservatory overlooking the garden of my home; a garden overflowing with the rich, vibrant colours and fruitful fertility of late August. The shifting dapples of sunlight beneath the gently swaying, leaf-adorned branches of the maple tree. The sweet pea frame, with its wispy purple blooms above tender, supple green stems, entwining themselves intricately across the expanse of the slender bamboo canes. The neat flowerbed at the garden's very heart, where robins pecked amongst soft brown soils and flowerbuds stretched, with soundless longing, towards the fading evening light as the sun begins its slow descent towards the western horizon.

I had sat there with my laptop, in my little comfy chair by the window, gazing towards the horizon, too, watching as the golden rays slanted upon the gently sloping sides of my beloved Slieve Blooms which guarded the skyline to the west, their peaks ablaze with vibrant patches of rich purple heather.I could picture those moors in my mind's eye as clearly as if I was standing directly above their heathery, windswept expanses: close enough to inhale the peaty scents of the boggy ground, to see how the wind rustled every single one of the tough-stemmed, scrubby plants with their tiny bell like flowers. Such unspoilt, wild, untamable beauty. A beauty that could never be tarnished or tainted: a beauty that would never be stifled or contained, for the mountains, and everything which they nurture and contain, will forever be free.

Beautiful, sweet freedom.

But as the sky dimmed and the sun slipped silently down between the soaring forms of those mountains, the garden was cast into shadow, the warmth of the evening ebbing away like foam being carried away by a stream. A delicate, feather-light chill hung in the air, prickling across the bare skin of my arms and shoulders. But I barely noticed that chill. All I could see, all I could feel was the emptiness that enveloped me, as surely as the darkness encompassed the garden. Because I knew I was not like the mountains. I was ensnared within that darkness, trapped in that gaping, vast emptiness. I knew that I was not free. That I never had been, or was anywhere near, free; ever since that day my eating disorder came into my life; the day when everything changed. And there had been those times when I felt as if I had the world at my feet; times when I felt as if could conquer everything and anything. Times when I convinced myself that I was fre...or at least, closer and closer to my freedom. That day back in May, 2014. The day when I promised myself - promised my loved ones - that I would never, ever give in to my greatest ever nemesis ever again. That no matter how bad things got, I would not give up. No matter how many times I fell down, I would pick myself up, pick up the pieces, and stumble forwards once again. I would never let myself be a prisoner, ever again...

But then, at the eclipse of that golden summer, as autumn leaves began to turn and change and the fragrant blooms which adorned the flowerbeds of my garden began to fade, withering and compressing into dry, brittle, lifeless forms of what they once were as if a single touch would cause them to disintegrate into dust, I could perceive another change in my own little world, too; a change that was occuring deep within my very soul. A change as gradual as the turning of the leaves as green gives in to gold; as steady and as inevitable as the purposeful, cruel, heartless advance of winter. I could feel my inner strength ebbing away, born away like those fallen leaves upon a icy cold wind. To be replaced by nothing but the emptiness, and the heady, crsuhing feeling of shame. because I knew that I was relapsing. The Voice had jumped in at my first sign of weakness, and its soft whispers filled my head with every step that I took, every breath that I inhaled. The shame was as heavy as a lead weight hung across my neck. The guilt was as sharp as a bramble thorn, pierced in my side so that I was left bleeding and crying out soundlessly for someone to help me. Soundlessly..because I thought, well, why should anyone come to help me? I was the girl who had failed. Who had put up such a brave face and had spoken of how she would give everything she had to recovery.. but you failed, Em, you failed. Just as you always do, and as you always did, and always will. You are the girl who failed...

You deserve this pain, this pain of not having your voice heard. 

But then a few days ago...can't even really remember what, or how, or when. All I do know is, I was longinto go back to my blogging once again....

And that, no, I should not feel ashamed.

I still haven't really succeeded in convincing myself this... It is so hard, and the guilt and the shame are still there, pressing down upon me. But alongside the guilt and the shame and that crippling sense of loss - the aching and crushing recognition of being the girl who failed - there is something else now, too. A tiny, quavering little flame of weak and feeble candleight. But it is there, all the same. A single, tiny, minute flicker of light in the yawning chasm of depthless emptiness.

I suppose, recovery is sort of like walking along a windswept beach, with the sound of the waves roaring in your ears as they roll in towards the shore; the relentless, gusty winds tugging fiercely at your clothes and hair and body as if wholly intent upon pulling you down, down into the rapidly advancing tide which approaches the sand upon which you walk without one shard of remorse or pity. And to fall would be to be engulfed by the icy, cruel, suffocating embrace of those rushing, icy waters; to be submerged within the fathomless depths of that sublime and terrible emptiness. No trace of you would remain, save that little set of footprints you made as you approached that beautiful, terrible shore: one single set of footprints in one huge, and impossibly cruel, world.


And this time last week, every single little part of me truly believed, that I had allowed myself to be borne away by that tide. That I had lost in my fight against the malignity which was my own eating disorder: that it had won, and that there was no hope left for me.

But I know now that my footprints don't just end here.

 It's true. I did fall down, in my slow trek upon that beach. I was borne away on the tide. But that did not mean that all hope was lost. I know that the past few weeks I have been drowning, and that it would only have been a matter of time before I was completely and utterly lost beneath the icy waters. But despite everything and how weak, scared, and afraid I now feel, I know that inside me there remains a little flame flickering. Which the icy waters have not - and will not- ever extinguish. I know that I have the strength deep inside me to do this. I know that I can find my way back to that beautiful golden shore. And that my footprints, instead of abruptly ending, will continue on their little path. My little path...the path that I choose. the path of recovery, with all its little slips and bumps and falls.

My footprints didn't  just end here.

Thank you so, so much, for staying with me. Please know that you have touched my heart in a hundred thousand ways and that you all mean so much more to me, thank you will ever, ever know. <3 xxxx